China’s leading retail website – Taobao has joined hands with some of the world’s best known brands on a sting operation to remove the sales of counterfeit products from the e-commerce website. A total of 89 brands including Apple, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel, Estee Lauder, Samsung, Panasonic and Swarovski are participating in the “Special Covert Anti-Counterfeit Operation” announced by Taobao on March 14.
With more than 10 million daily new product listings on Taobao, the sheer number made it very difficult to track counterfeit products. The introduction of a sting operation was inevitable to eradicate fake goods.
The method is simple and effective. Everyday a list of suspected products will be purchased by Taobao itself. These goods will be screened for authenticity and merchants with counterfeit products will punished according to Taobao’s guidelines. Taobao has already purchased 608 items and 586 sellers were found guilty. Taobao disciplines merchants by assessing points against them for violations of its trading policies. The seller will be shut off from Taobao when he or she reaches 48 points within a calendar year.
“This collaboration with brand owners is a further step by Taobao to fortify and escalate its commitment to eliminate counterfeit products from the site, which will advance Taobao’s goal of being a retail destination where consumers can shop with confidence,” said Justine Chao, a Taobao spokeswoman.
In addition to the sting operation, Taobao has implemented a series of safeguards designed to keep counterfeit products off the site, as reported on Alibaba Group’s news site. The safeguards include:
Automated filtering: Product listings that do not match manufacturer SKUs (indicating they are authentic) or are priced abnormally are removed by an automated filtering system. Taobao maintains databases of SKUs and standard product prices.
Manual filtering: A dedicated team monitors the site around the clock and can remove problematic goods from circulation at any time.
Reporting by users: Every product-listing page contains a button so shoppers can easily report suspicious items.
Coordination with brand owners: Taobao received complaints from more than 6,000 brand owners in 2010 and as a result removed approximately 14 million product listings. Taobao is currently in discussion with 214 brand owners on further cooperation.
Taobao officials said that all these programs result in an average of 20,000 product listings being removed from the site each day. I particularly like how Taobao has leveraged users as gatekeepers. In its efforts to make the site increasingly authentic, Taobao is seriously doing a great job.
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